In Fez, Morocco, a mob attacked a group of LGBT+ people, who called the police for help. Police arrested them instead. Sign NOW to help them.
In Fez, Morocco, a mob gathered outside a home in the Lirak neighborhood on August 19 and attacked the people living there with insults, threats, and stones. The residents called the police for help. When officers arrived, they arrested ten of the LGBT+ people who lived there, not the people who attacked them.
Several of those arrested say they were humiliated because of how they looked and pressured to sign police statements they were not able to read or understand. Videos and posts identifying them then spread online, fueling more threats. A nationwide strike by lawyers meant no legal team could represent them at their first court hearing on August 24. Their case has been adjourned to September 7, and a defense team has now been secured, but only after urgent, last-minute efforts by a support committee working on their behalf.
This case is part of a wider pattern in Morocco, where queer and trans people, sex workers, and others are increasingly policed and exposed in the name of protecting so-called public morality. Morocco's Article 489 punishes consensual acts between people of the same sex with up to three years in prison, and police routinely treat things like shared housing or a relationship as evidence for that charge. That means someone can end up in court not for anything they did to another person, but for who they live with.
Morocco's Minister of Justice can guarantee these people have real legal representation, order an investigation into the mob attack and the online exposure that followed it, and ensure no one is prosecuted simply for their identity or who they love. Add your name to tell him the world is watching this case.
